Selkies, Mermaids, and Other Human-Animal Merfolk in Contemporary Irish Poetry

Abstract

From its very beggining, Irish Literature has been very connected to the ocean. Mythological creatures such as selkies, mermaids and what is known as merfolk in general, have constitued a crucial part of Irish folk tradition. Interestingly enough, this trope is also recurrent in contemporary Irish poetry, especially in that crafted by female writers. This dissertation will analyse Nuale Ní Dhomhnaill's poetry collection "The Fifty Minute Mermaid", as well as a selection of various poems authored by some of the most relevant female figures of current Irish poetry, so as to scrutinize the bounds between the allegory of the sea creature and modern configurations of womanhood. My hypothesis is that the current use of this allegorial merfolk by contemporary Irish women poets throws new light on those binary oppositions that have traditionally framed women's lives: private e public spheres, entrapment and mobility, fixity and change, body and mind, human and animal, etc. Therefore, with the help of recent debates in Ecocriticism, Ecofeminism and Animal Studies, I aspire to show how the mentioned mythological sea creatures which have been mainly associated with Irish folk tradition and sometimes considered as symbols of cultural and national identity, are reshaped by contemparary female authors to construct new, alternative female subjectivities